"Monomedia"
and the First Amendment

by Norman
Solomon

June 27, 2002

Speaking
with grace and ease, a pensive network anchor compared the America of today
with the one of a year ago. His script had the ring of media truth at the start
of a new season. "How different the summer is going to be for all of
us," CNN's Aaron Brown told viewers. A minute later, he added:
"Summer life is going on. It's just different. Everything is."

Such
assertions have repeated endlessly in media circles. They make sense if dictionaries
are now obsolete and words don't really need to mean anything in particular.
"Everything" is "different" for "all of us" only
when the preposterous can be rendered plausible.

As a practical
matter, virtually closed loops often dominate major news outlets. The result is
what we could call "monomedia." When similar noises keep filling echo
chambers, they tend to drown out

other sounds.

July Fourth
gives us an opportunity to pause and reflect. This holiday commemorates a
revolution that made possible the extraordinarily important First Amendment.
These days, in theory, just about everyone in the country has freedom to speak.
But freedom to be heard is another matter.

Varied sources
of information and genuine diversity of viewpoints should reach the public on
an ongoing basis. But they don't.

"The war
on terrorism" is a case in point. All kinds of claims -- including the
media-fueled notion that everything has changed for everyone since Sept. 11 --
can take hold while rarely undergoing direct challenge. Newsrooms and studios,
filled with hot-air balloons, are apt to harmonize with the pronouncements of
official Washington as long as sharp pins don't get through the door.

The huge gap
between freedom of speech and freedom to be heard also helps to explain how
fervent belief in Uncle Sam's intended benevolence remains so widespread among
Americans. Laid on thick by the dominant voices of mass communication, the
latest conventional wisdom swiftly hardens and calcifies.

Beginning early
last fall, a function of monomedia was to let us know that massive U.S. bombing
of Afghanistan was wise, prudent and just. After all, it was a necessary safety
measure to protect ourselves as a nation!

But on June 16
a front-page New York Times article, citing "senior government
officials," reported that the Pentagon's killing spree in Afghanistan did
not make Americans any safer: "Classified investigations of the (Al) Qaeda
threat now under way at the FBI and CIA have concluded that the war in Afghanistan
failed to diminish the threat to the United States, the officials said.
Instead, the war might have complicated counterterrorism efforts by dispersing
potential attackers across a wider geographic area."

Such a
flat-out conclusion -- about 180 degrees from the trumpeted rationale for
spending billions of our tax dollars to kill thousands of people in Afghanistan
-- might seem to merit more than a few dozen words. But the Times did not
belabor the point. The assessment, while prominent, was brief and fleeting. It
seemed to cause little stir in American news media.

Some European
outlets were a bit more interested in mulling over the implications. Agence
France Presse immediately put out a story with this lead: "Classified U.S.
investigations of the threat posed by Al Qaeda have concluded that the war in
Afghanistan has failed to diminish the threat to the United States and may have
increased it, U.S. officials told the New York Times." A week later, in
the London-based Guardian, journalist Jonathan Steele noted the Times report
and went on to reconsider the U.S. assault on Afghanistan.

"Forget,
for a moment, the hundreds of civilians killed by bombs and the thousands who
died of hunger during the disruption of aid supplies," Steele wrote.
"Ignore the dangerous precedent of accepting one nation's right to
overthrow a foreign government, however brutal, by bombing another country. The
crude test of the operation depends on whether the fall of the Taliban
outweighs the high costs. In the euphoria of last December many people felt it
did. Can they feel so sure six months down the line?"

Of course they
can -- especially if those kinds of pointed questions don't get asked very
often. In monomedia, who needs the hassle?

Inked onto
parchment and chiseled into stone, the First Amendment is not really a
guarantee. It's a promissory ideal that can be redeemed only by our own
vitality in the present. If freedom of speech can be augmented by freedom to be
heard, then Americans may hear enough divergent voices to disabuse themselves
of easy and deadly clichés.

Norman
Solomon's latest book is The Habits of Highly Deceptive Media.
His syndicated column focuses on media and politics.